Ladies in the dark

And now, cher public, the vocal identification quiz in excelsis, Leonora’s great Act IV scena from Il trovatore, as sung by 25 sopranos (and five tenors). And the winner of the contest will enjoy a most sumptuous prize package.

For this fiendishly difficult quiz prepared by Our Own DeCaffarrelli, your task is to identify as many Leonoras (and Manricos) as possible, in the correct order, in the comments section.

Please note that selections 11, 12, 14, 15 and 16, comprising the “Miserere” each include a Leonora and a Manrico, both of whom should be identified. (For example, you might answer “11. Rosa Ponselle and Andrea Bocelli“.) Thus the highest possible score on this quiz will be 30 correct names.

Whoever identifies all 30 correctly first will win the contest; if the competition time elapses without any perfect entries, whoever gets the highest number of correct answers will win. In case of a tie, the earlier entry will be declared winner. All decisions will be made by La Cieca, which I don’t think I need to tell you implies finality.

Now, what does one win, besides eternal fame and glory? Well, our good friends at Opera Depot are contributing a brand new 16GB iPod Touch and a gift certificate for downloads of 20 complete operas to help fill it!

La Cieca will keep this competition open for 10 days, finishing on August 14 at midnight, and at that point, whichever commenter has identified correctly (and in the correct order, of course) the highest number of Leonore and Manrici will win!

Giasone, bravo -- #23 is definitely Stoyanova, not Deutekom. But I’m still pretty sure #14 is not Tucci, an Italian singer would not pronounce fian as “fyan” and cadavere with a covered “e”. So my best guess is Amara, although I don’t have the recording. #8 is Sass for sure -- I’m still not sure about #3 (could be Parutto, Ligabue, even Dimitrova) and #21, but this is my final guess: